Dying is easy. Living is hard.

Step back, back into the world of 1996…

"Dark fiction so numbing cold and cutting edge you better hold onto your ass with your free hand … There are no simple ‘entertainments' or cheap grabs for the throat to be found here. Hodge is deadly serious about presenting a world where the worst punishment is the mere fact that you are aware you will probably live to see another day."

So wrote critic Stanley Wiater about Brian Hodge's renowned first short fiction collection,The Convulsion Factory. Three collections later, nothing has changed.

Well … maybe one or two trifling entertainments. A couple of cheap grabs for some body part or another. But that's about it. There are still plenty of fates worse than death.

Table of Contents:

With Acknowledgments To Sun Tzu

If I Should Wake Before I Die

The Passion of the Beast

De Fortuna

The Firebrand Symphony

Brushed In Blackest Silence

Pull

An Ounce Of Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Flesh

And They Will Come In The Hour of Our Greatest Need

Re: Your Application of 5/5

Where the Black Stars Fall

When the Silence Gets Too Loud

Guardian

Hate the Sinner, Love the Sin

A Good Dead Man Is Hard To Find

Our Turn Too Will One Day Come

When the Bough Doesn't Break